Classy - Gone With The Wind / The Prestige

I hardly get time and patience to watch movies lately. But I managed to watch a few last week from the bunch of movies lying in my 500 GB external hard disk for long time. Couple of them were "The Prestige" and "Gone with the wind", two classic movies release of two different era and both made a motion picture from best selling novels and I liked both.

The Prestige:

I heard a good review of this movie about 3 years back and downloaded it. But the movie was deleted without watching due to shortage of memory in our computer back then. I got this movie very lately from one of colleague friend. I may have taken so many days to watch it for the first time, but it took less than a day for me to watch it the second time. It is such a candid movie from the renowned director "Christoper Nolan" whose recent flick "The Inception" movie got him many attention. I was able to better comprehend the movie only in the second watch.

The story revolves around two rival magicians namely Angier and Borden whose rivalry gets exacerbated when the latter performs an stunning crowd pulling illusion back in London. The movie reveals few illusions which magicians perform commonly which I was wondering how for many years.

Every magic consists of three parts.

The first part is called "The Pledge" where the magician shows something ordinary like a deck of cards or a bird.

The second part is called "The Turn" where the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary like disappearing it.

The third and the hardest part is called "The Prestige" where the magician brings back what he disappeared.

The ultimated illusion done by Borden was called "The Transported Man", the prestige of which was kept secretly by him. Borden lives his real life to support this illusion keeping even his wife and child away from the secret. His rival Angier tries unorthodox ways to make Borden reveal it but he fails. Finally he goes to America to meet a Scientist who invents a machine which duplicates everything which it holds. This is where the movie contradicts nature. Apart from this part, I liked every other part of the movie and it could well contest for a classic work.

The movie has enough suspense to carry forward in every scene to make you stay close to the screen once you manage to get pass the first few minutes.


Gone with the wind:

The next movie was the 1939 classic "Gone with the wind", winner of 10 Academy awards. This was the first time I had watched a movie which runs more than three and a half hours. The stage was set during the American Civil war time with a mentally strong lady named Scarlet as a protagonist.

I was stunned when operations where performed without giving anesthesia to soldiers of war, since they ran out of it. The scene should have definitely stunned the audience of 1939 who were very close to the civil war.

A civilization in southern America in a place called Tara gets destroyed completely and goes in the wind after which the movie is named. Scarlet loses her lover Ashley in the start of the movie who gets married to her cousin. She then loses her husband, a soldier who becomes a victim of the civil war. She then moves to Atlanta to forget all these agony during when the civilisations get washed out in the south. She bravely returns back through the war destroyed places to her parents back in Tara with a pistol for her protection. The town runs out of everything including food. Scarlet fights all odds including murdering an Yankee to rescue Tara. She marries a local businessman for the second time, who too gets killed in a trifle in the town later. Scarlet then marries a rich man called Rhett Butler for the third time and gives birth to a girl child. She later even loses her daughter in an accident and even Rhett leaves her to complicate her agony. Even after all these, Scarlet possess strength to go forward in her life.

A note on a private building in Tara is still in my mind which says:

"Don't squander Time.
This is the stuff of which life is made of."

The movie portraits the struggle of Scarlet who turns from a playful girl to a serious lady to save her love and family and is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Expressing Chennai

To the growing malls of Chennai, Express Avenue is the latest addition. Newly opened, weekdays,  not fully functional and late hours aren't good reasons to stop the mall from getting crowed.

It was 25 th August, Wednesday when I had taken off from my work. My privilege leaves have got accumulated and was reaching 48, the maximum permitted in my company. After which, the count does not increase. I have to utilize it by taking few leaves. It was the start.

I decided to keep myself busy with my personal stuffs that day. I realized I had stayed away from TV for a long time now. Around 11 am in the morning, I walked to a shop nearly by and placed an order for Sun Direct. To my surprise, everything including the installation and activation was completed around 1 pm the same day. I earlier had Tata Sky in the house I used to stay. I preferred Sun Direct this time since few regional channels which my mother watches is relayed only in Sun Direct. I must admit now that Tata Sky is of better clarity and enjoyable than Sun at a little extra cost.

I took my Mom to Marina beach behind light house to buy fish that evening. Fish is my favorite Non Veg item since it has just protein and no fat :) We prefer buying in Marina since they are very fresh from net.
I totally forgot that I had booked for a show the same evening for the movie 'Naan Mahan Alla' in the new Satyam Escape in the Express Avenue along with my colleagues.

I got a call around 6:30 pm from my colleagues to come to the theater. Even they had forgotten that I was on leave that day. I was told that the show starts at 6:45 and I just had around 15 mins. I have to drive from Nungambakkam to Royapettah. I knew I could manage that but the only big hurdle on my way was the Chennai's evening traffic. People would be returning home from their day's work and the roads would be flooded.

I did some rash driving after a long time and managed to be in the mall on time. I could use the oxymoron carefully rash. I was exactly on time for the movie as well.

The movie was a perfect fit in the genre of entertainer running little more than 2 hours without any boredom. The movie is all fun in the first half and all action in the second half with its interval creating a gulf between them.

Karthi, who is just 4 movies old has already got huge fans following him. Never before the industry was dominated by two brothers to this extent. Last week, leading distributors and theater owners came up with the box office value ranking of the Tamil stars in which both Suriya and Karthi are present in the top 5.

Last time I had a thought that PVR Cinemas was the best in Chennai. But the thought has changed now. Satyam Escape is a better theatre with best sound system than PVR. Even the trailers shown in the popcorn counter are great attractions.

I am not a frequent visitor to box offices. I had accepted my colleagues to join them for this movie, since I had not been to the mall before. The movie was followed by a treat shared by Suresh and Partha. Suresh for clinching the 'Best of Bally' award and Partha for his new born baby.

Thankfully I didn't miss the fun.

Stockholm Syndrome

I was thinking of the best heroism I have enjoyed in movies.
Is it Superman or Spiderman? Is it Rocky or Rambo? Is it Robin Hood or the terminator?
No. It is none other than Bond, James Bond.

James Bond 007 is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. 7 Actors have portrayed the Bond character till date and my favorite of them is Pierce Brosnan. I have watched all 4 of his works which include Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day.

The other day, I was watching my favorite of the 4, ‘The World Is Not Enough’. I have seen this movie several times and it never bores me. Bond uses a phrase ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ in it. I have heard it several times but never managed to find what it was. After many days, I finally managed to Google it.
In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.

The term was coined after the Norrmalmstorg robbery which occurred on 23 August, 1973 in Stockholm, Sweden. In this robbery, the robbers held bank employees as hostage for 6 days. The victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed from their ordeal.
The whole movie was based on this concept. The bond calls this a common thing in kidnappings. But how do the captors win the hearts of the captives so easily?

Here is the Psychoanalytic explanations for it. Captives when they are threatened gravely but are shown acts of kindness by their captors, tend to sympathize and think highly of their captors. When subjected to prolonged captivity, these captives can develop a strong bond with their captors.
Any small favor in difficult times are better remembered and appreciated by all of us even in our normal life.

“A friend in need is a friend indeed”

Masters of Obsolete Technology

1985:

You are a software engineer in a most prestigious company in India. You are the best in the field. You are a team of 4 and you guys together have a dream of On site. You guys are working in a E-commerce product. You have created the product's design for your team. You guys wanted to install it in production in US by your own hands being On site. But your Team Lead is a crooked guy who always pushes you guys down. He doesn't let your dreams to come alive and sends someone else for the job. You argue with him and your egos clashes with his in a bad way and you end up resigning with your entire team from the organisation.

2010:

25 years later the product which you had developed needs a critical enhancement. All the current engineers are not well versed in the obsolete technology of 1985 and they suggest to redo the entire product. But the client didn't agree since for them it is not just a e-commerce product. It is the e-commerce product used for running critical business. The manager is now left with no other option and looks for you.

The Manager is none other the lead of you in 1985 with whom your egos clashed. His team come to you for help which you alone could offer. You send them back refusing help and give them a career advice to stay away from that crooked manager. They critise you for not being a team Player.

You sit in your home and think of you and your teams old dreams. You 4 guys were a great team and the best in the industry but were always denied a chance of on site. The entire team had suffered for the personal clash you had with the lead then. Now its your pay back time. You take the product design which is untouched for years from your racks and analyse it.

You go the company the next day to the old ego Lead (current Manager) and virtually blackmail him with the solution which you have for his problem. This is the deal which you make with him for the critical enhancement in the obsolete technology.

You want your entire old team of 4 to get assembled again and not just you.

You want to be on site with your team to deploy the enhancement.

The Manager hesitates and finally agrees as he is running out of options.

You go to each of your old team guys personally and explain the situation. All of the guys agrees since their old dream of being on site for the product is still vivid in their minds.

You guys work on the enhancement and finish it and it is all ready to get deployed in US. You start your journey from India and your family wishes you success all the way till airport. You guys have reached US and are on site. You guys share high fives for living your dreams after realising it was worth a wait.

You guys are analysing the live production before going with the deployment and you find that your product is misused for selling weapons to Terrorists.

What do you do now?

I just narrated the Clint Eastwood's Blockbuster 'Space Cowboys' with just few changes.

They are not software Engineers. They are Aeronautical Engineers.

Their on site was not US. It is the Moon.

Year 1985 is 1958

Year 2010 is 1998

The product is not a E-Commerce site. But a space shuttle.

And the prestigious company is NASA.

Make sense now?